Cup of Joe: Starkey on sports in 350 words or less <\/p>\n
The Pirates had the second-most strikeouts in the National League last season. They whiffed 1,422 times.<\/p>\n
Add one more. Bob Nutting and Ben Cherington watched a fastball go right down the middle.<\/p>\n
The Pirates desperately need a third baseman. Eugenio Suarez plays that position (sort of), but even if he wanted to DH, who cares? You fit him in, because above all the Pirates need power, even with the acquisitions of Brandon Lowe and Ryan O\u2019Hearn.<\/p>\n
If that guaranteed the end for Andrew McCutchen, so be it. Suarez hit 49 home runs last season, representing 42% of the Pirates\u2019 total of 117 and one more than O\u2019Hearn and Lowe combined.<\/p>\n
Would the right-handed Suarez have hit that many playing half his games at PNC Park? Likely not. But I\u2019d take 28 or 33 \u2014 and half the games aren\u2019t at PNC Park.<\/p>\n
Would he have played a robust third base? No. But the Pirates need power more than Ke\u2019Bryan Hayes 2.0.<\/p>\n
Is he 34 and coming off a rotten second half?<\/p>\n
Yes. Did I mention he hit almost half as many home runs as the entire Pirates roster?<\/p>\n
To add insult to injury, Suarez went to Cincinnati. The Reds made the playoffs last season under manager Terry Francona, a Pittsburgh native who might have replaced Derek Shelton here.<\/p>\n
The Suarez offers reportedly were equal \u2014 one year, $15 million. How often is a 49 home-run guy available for that?<\/p>\n
The Pirates should know that equal isn\u2019t going to cut it when you\u2019re a league laughingstock. You need to outbid people, maybe significantly.<\/p>\n
They should have offered $2-4 million more or an extra year (Suarez and the Reds have a mutual option for 2027). It hardly would have bankrupted a franchise that again will operate on a puny Nutting payroll \u2014 a nut roll, you might say.<\/p>\n
As ESPN\u2019s Jeff Passan tweeted, \u201cThe best bat left on the market goes to Cincinnati.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maybe Suarez just wanted to return to a town where he played before. That\u2019s fine. But I would have tempted him.<\/p>\n
I would have swung the bat. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cup of Joe: Starkey on sports in 350 words or less The Pirates had the second-most strikeouts in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448443,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-448442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}